What is the most direct driving decision and change among American voters in the 2022 midterm elections?
Democrats are likely to be talking about former President Trump, his followers who rejected the election results, and the dire consequences of the Supreme Court overturning federal protections on abortion rights; Republicans focus on the reality of a sluggish economy, rising inflation, growing refugees at the border and rising crime in some cities, blaming Democrats for their lack of governance. There is no doubt that this is exacerbating political divisions, igniting popular anger, attracting media attention, and prompting political analysts to focus more and more on them.
Yet nearly two years after Trump's fall from office and the Republican Party's loss of power in Congress, Christian nationalism is quietly emerging within the party, which has long failed to pursue any coherent political philosophy. Although it does not correspond to historical facts and scholars of religious studies disagree, as a hypothesis, its proponents insist that the United States is a nation founded on Christianity; In this land, everyone should observe teachings that are in keeping with their spirit; The government, for its part, has a responsibility to enact laws consistent with the spirit of its teachings to constrain and regulate people's moral and social behavior.
While Christian statism has lacked mainstream influence for decades and has been active on the margins, increasingly powerful far-right members of Congress are increasingly embracing the theory and voicing their alarming endorsement louder and clearer than ever before. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, known for his obsession with conspiracy theories and denying election results, has argued more than once that the Republican Party should embrace Christian nationalism as its core governing platform. Other members of Congress, including Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, reiterated that claim.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (left) and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, right, stand with other lawmakers to listen to U.S. President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in Washington, D.C., March 1, 2022.
Among them, no one is a louder, clearer, and more determined champion of Christian nationalism than Pennsylvania senator, retired Army colonel, and current Republican Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. Born into an Italian-American family with a military background, Mastriano himself had more than three decades of military service before retiring in 2017. He and his family were Mennonites in protest against evangelicals, which repeatedly emphasized in their teachings that the Bible is the supreme authority over people's faith and life.
Since his campaign for governor, he has built his core ideas on the ambiguous relationship between politics and Christianity and has defended many of his controversial statements and actions, including his strong praise of the QAnon conspiracy theory, his active participation in Trump's "stop stealing" campaign to try to change the outcome of the election, and the sending of violent elements of Trump's "believers" to the Capitol on January 6. All this is done under the guise of "for the divine movement of God." Before encouraging followers to storm Congress and even leapfrog police barricades himself, Maastrono once spoke generously at the mobilization rally that sparked the riot, "I sincerely pray that God will pour out His Holy Spirit in Washington, D.C., as we have never seen before." ”
In 2020, he and other deniers planned to harass election officials in an attempt to change the outcome of Biden, Pennsylvania's victory. In an online call plotting to overthrow the election, he compared the anti-democratic behavior to the heroism of Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93: After learning that the plane had been hijacked, Bimer rushed into the cockpit and engaged in a desperate fight with terrorists, trying to regain control of the plane to prevent it from attacking another building, eventually causing the plane to crash in the wilderness and killing all the people.
A typical Mastriano campaign rally usually begins with a protest preacher singing their love for America. Accompanied by songs that ignited the enthusiasm of his supporters, he would go to the center of the podium and read the Bible with supporters to attack his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro, the current Jewish state attorney general, for his dislove of America and his attempts to deprive people of their freedom of religion. During his election campaign, he often gave political performances with distinctive religious symbols. For example, at an event in April, he received a "Sword of David" inscribed with the words "For God and Country" by two advocates of QAnon conspiracy theories. This prominent symbol attempts to compare him to the future king of Israel who defeated the giant Goliath in the Hebrew Bible.
The shameless manipulation of the invisible God became Mastriano's most persuasive propaganda tool, and gradually justified his words and actions. His anti-democratic rallying cry successfully caught the attention of much-needed Trump and helped him win the official endorsement of his former president in the Republican primary. That was the biggest factor in his defeat of Rep. Lou Barletta, a moderate, who had been re-elected four times, in that race.
On September 30, 2022 local time, Doug Mastriano, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delivered a speech at a rally.
In defending his anti-democratic beliefs, Maastrono often uses the phrase "appeal to heaven." This statement originally came from the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke. He defended violent uprisings against violent rule. Yet tyranny is clearly something the U.S. government has never done to white Christians. Conservative fundamentalist Christian groups actively absorbed and deliberately distorted Locke's original meaning and used it to attack any political ideas or social trends they did not like. They became more radical during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, which eventually led to a group of white anti-government militia members attacking multiple state capitols in an attempt to kidnap the governor of Michigan and dissolve the state government.
Pennsylvania is one of the most politically tense regions in the United States, where Trump won in 2016 but was defeated by Biden four years later. The attitudes of independent voters and the middle class often determine the ultimate direction of an election. Although this left him behind in the polls, Maastrono offered no remorse for his radical Christian statism. For observers of this election, this is a direct indication of how strong and sincere his faith in Christian nationalism is. His views expressed as the Republican nominee during the Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign are being further amplified by the media, becoming a red flag for Christian nationalism to enter the hall and gradually become a popular perception in American political thought.
The most persuasive argument against Christian nationalism is simple: America has never been a nation founded on Christianity. This is a historical fact that is fully discussed and universally acknowledged by historians and scholars of religious studies. The first American colonies established by British colonists did stem from a yearning for the Puritan life, swearing allegiance only to God and not to the monarch, but that all changed in the 18th century. The people who fought for the liberation of 13 colonies and thus established an independent state with equal rights remained the dominant faith, but they were also increasingly aware of the dangers of imposing their own perceptions. The British-born revolutionary Thomas Paine argued in Common Sense that the United States needed independence precisely because the British monarchy had as absolute and unquestionable power over the colonies as the Pope did over the Catholic monarchs.
Historians, such as David Holmes, argue that the attitude of early American political forces toward religion was deism. The theory was popular in the Age of Enlightenment, believing that empirical reasoning and logical observation were the best way to determine the existence of God and did not require supernatural revelation. Most of America's founding fathers were skeptical of the influence of religion in the political sphere, especially the third president, Thomas Jefferson. He wrote in 1802 that "religion is a matter of wholly between man and God" and that the legislature should not "make any law relating to the establishment of religion or the prohibition of religious freedom." This recognition was accepted and embraced by the vast majority of Americans at that time and became one of the main principles of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Another evidence of the Founding Fathers' desire for religion to interfere in political sovereignty is reflected in Article 6 of the Constitution, which stipulates that religious belief is not required for any office.
Howard Chandler Christy / Signing of the Constitution
The modern Christian nationalist movement emerged in the 50s of the 20th century. At that time, the phrase "a nation under God" in American schools was written into law, the U.S. currency began to be required by the government to print the words "We believe in God," there were departisan religious political ceremonies like the National Breakfast Prayer Meeting, and charismatic and popular evangelical preachers like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell. Andrew Whitehead, a professor of religious studies at Indiana-Purdue University, argues that Christian nationalism is not a religious doctrine but a "political theology that draws on Christian narratives and symbolism in terms of race" and is designed to lure more white American Christians into fear and disgust for groups that are different from their own identity because they will "replace" them. In this narrative, the purpose and argue are similar to the unabashed white supremacist "Great Replacement" theory, which holds that the increase in the non-white population of the United States constitutes genocide. The hype for the theory has been at the root of several racially hate-filled mass shootings across the United States, including the massacre in Buffalo, New York, in May of which 10 black people were shot dead by a white man while shopping at a supermarket.
Whitehead also noted that white Christian leaders have a long history of resisting the American democratic republic. They initially did so to fight the abolition of slavery and the end of apartheid, to provide a biblical justification for the dehumanization of all groups that were not white, and to believe that upholding racial oppression was linked to keeping America as a purely Christian nation. In the 70s of the 20th century, the rise of figures such as Paul Weyrich and Richard John Neuhaus made it even more influential. After the Second Vatican Council, Veric was disappointed with what he had assumed to be a growing liberal wind in the Catholic Church, and became active in right-wing policy circles in order to effectively inject his conservative religious beliefs into public policy. He co-founded the Heritage Foundation with donations from the wealthy Coors family as a policy think tank to advance economic laissez-faire and oppose government regulation. He also co-founded The American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit made up of right-wing state lawmakers and private sector lobbyists. They share model legislation in each state to advance a more Christian anti-regulatory cause. Their fierce opposition to environmental regulation, undocumented immigration, sexual minority rights, labor unions, gun control, and making voting harder is now the most effective weapon in right-wing politics, and they continue to create new ways to stop Republican-run states from being influenced by more progressive federal government policies.
Newhouse was originally a Lutheran priest and later a Catholic priest. He has been a relentless anti-abortion advocate in magazine newsletters and books, comparing the abortion rights movement to a civil rights movement. His identity and influence helped bring protesting evangelicals together with conservative Catholics who, despite their disagreements over their confessions of Christianity, shared a common cultural cause against liberalism. In his work, he is adamant that he is leading a moral battle with political leaders against the "counterculture" of the '60s, which included abortion, abandonment of family values, drugs and homosexuality. He later became a confidant of President George W. Bush, served as his unofficial religious adviser, and became one of the most staunch factors in Bush's staunch opposition to stem cell research, abortion, and same-sex marriage during his presidency.
Sociologists Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry argue in The Flag and the Cross that Christian nationalism has always been the embodiment of a form of self-centered individualism with little concern for the rights of people with different identities, since the colonizers established their strongholds and committed genocide against "Indian" indigenous peoples. The tradition of white male Christians wielding supremacy in the country lasted for more than 200 years until Obama took office in 2009. When he became president and began implementing liberal policies, often in the public interest, some white Christians felt their majority identity and status were threatened and began using religious symbols in protests to express their quest for freedom, such as claiming that God opposes liberal policies and calling Obama "not a true Christian."
With the rise of the Tea Party movement, these appeals have had amazing results. As a group of Republicans who support small-government principles and tax cuts, Tea Party members often lament the nation's rising debt and government spending. Lawmakers who identified with the movement grabbed a Republican majority in the House of Representatives in 2010, greatly undermining Obama's viability to pass meaningful reforms and legislation. Opinion polls show that most members of the movement consider themselves evangelical Christians; What's more, in one survey, 57 percent of respondents believed that "America has always been a Christian nation" — a cultural bond that binds these people together and a positive response from wealthy conservative donors. This perception led them to believe that the United States, both in the land itself and in its constitutional political system, represented the "blessing of God" and worshipped the Constitution as a god as almost unchallengeable, which led fundamentalist right-wing jurists and legislators to become more resistant to reform at this time.
On September 9, 2015, local time, Washington, D.C., tea party supporters held a rally on the west front lawn of the U.S. Capitol.
The Tea Party movement's conflict with secular and liberal forces in society intensified not because of divergent economic views, but from continuing racial tensions in the United States. To justify themselves and the danger of their enemies, the Tea Party often associates Obama with African-American nationalism and with radicals such as his former pastor Jeremiah Wright and Islamic State leader Louis Farakhan. Tea Party members have gone out of their way to spread such conspiracy theories, claiming that Obama was actually born in Kenya and is ineligible to be president, and is a secretive Muslim.
All of this culminated with the rise of Trump, who not only became the successor to the Obama President Ma, but also succeeded in secularizing and generalizing Christian nationalism into a decaying white populist movement. Trump's message and narrative on the campaign trail are adept at evoking a religious sense of apocalyptic crisis and a never-absent dualism of good and evil. He often used the word "catastrophe" to disparage any liberal policies he disliked, which resonated strongly with white Christians who feared their majority dominance being replaced. Gorsky and Perry argue that the underlying message of Trumpism and Christian nationalism is the same, both freedom, order, and violence; In other words, it was the white people who used "righteous" violence to defend their freedom to establish order.
That's why, after George Floyd's murder by a white police officer sparked nationwide outcry, Trump and right-wing politicians have been using the slogan "law and order" to counter demands for racial justice. Christian nationalists will only use such expressions when it is beneficial to their narrative; When Trump spread the big lie about the theft of the election, urged his supporters to storm the Capitol and injured more than 100 Capitol policemen, they showed no concern, even calling the riot a "legitimate discourse."
Christian nationalism is probably the most dangerous political theory that has emerged in the United States since Nazism. As a narrative about hierarchical order and freedom, it explicitly unites "us" and alienates "them" based on racial and religious identity, encourages white Christians to demonize anyone else, and distorts historical facts to justify their demographic and moral need to maintain majority. The separation of church and state was enshrined in the constitution from the very beginning and has long withstood challenges that continue to this day. In recent years, the challenges that have loomed have gradually moved from the background to the forefront, bringing the debate on the separation of church and state to an impasse. The Supreme Court, which has a majority of conservatives and fundamentalists, is hearing a number of cases, and these rulings are likely to amplify the influence of Christianity in the social sphere and even make it mandatory in public education. While these people do not represent the majority of the population and are often attacked by other Christian groups, failure by the American public to be aware of their dangerous political intentions can lead them to gradually erode power and the ability to impose their cherished views of rigid hierarchies and theocracy on anyone living in the country, plunging the land into a deep retrogression that is difficult to turn back to.
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